Applications and devices in a communication network are typically managed according to one or more of the following protocols: Telnet; Security Shell (SSH); Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP); Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP); Common Open Policy Service Protocol for Policy Provisioning (COPS-PR); Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP); and Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). However, these protocols have drawbacks. These protocols usually require at least certain dedicated network infrastructure. In addition, according to these protocols, a network manager often has to communicate more or less directly with each network device being managed. CDP typically enables discovery on only a single network segment, and SNMP does not readily enable management of multiple applications at a single network device.